The Z87X-OC may be reserved for people who seldom patronize the PC case industry; but for everyone else, GIGABYTE has three options based on Intel's Z87 Express chipset, which supports overclocking on 4th generation Core "Haswell" K-series processors (detailed here). Leading the trio is the feature-rich Z87X-UD5H, followed by the fairly well-equipped Z87X-UD3H, and trailed by the most affordable of the three, Z87X-D3H.

The Z87X-UD5H packs a massive 16-phase CPU VRM, even if it's not backed by the Z87X-OC's voltage-control/monitoring paraphernalia. The CPU is wired to three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x16/NC/NC or x8/x8/NC or x8/x4/x4), three PCI-Express 2.0 x1, and a legacy PCI. The board features a total of ten SATA 6 Gb/s internal ports, six of which are driven by the Z87 PCH, four by third-party controllers. Display connectivity includes two HDMI ports, and one each of dual-link DVI and DisplayPort. 8-channel HD audio with TOSLINK digital output, two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, eight USB 3.0 ports (six rear, two by header), make for the rest of it.

The Z87X-UD3H goes a little easy on the features. It uses a simpler 8-phase VRM to power the CPU, retains the expansion slot layout of the Z87X-UD5H, gives you a still impressive eight SATA 6 Gb/s internal ports, swaps out the second gigabit Ethernet connection for a pair of eSATA ports, and the second HDMI port for a D-Sub (VGA).

The most affordable among the three is the Z87X-D3H. It features a similar 8-phase VRM to the Z87X-UD3H, an identical expansion slot layout to the other two, while cuts back a little on SATA and USB 3.0 connectivity. It features just the six SATA 6 Gb/s internal ports, all of which are wired to the Z87 PCH; and features "just" six USB 3.0 ports (four rear, two by header).Source: Lab501.ro

Its simply that the heat-sink configuration and design of the heat-sinks for these boards have not been finalized.

In all likelihood these boards on display are not even functional. There purpose is to show component placement, board design, show feature set and so on. It announces their product offerings but again its still fairly early.

That chipset heat-sink shown probably wont be on the final retail product,......

Wow, people with a billion posts on this forum and they're still not used to how prototype/reference motherboards are presented...

But seriously, there's nothing too relevant in any of these posts... not much details about them at all, it's all to plain to actually know what to expect. Other than n number of thises and m number of thats and maybe the general layout of them... all of which is subject to change anyway.

back on to the technical side of things and not how to stupid board looks, who cares, way to many do and are to blind to read that these arent finished anyways..... anyways....

I was really hoping that Z87/Haswell would open up more lanes to PCIE... be really nice to have 16x/16x for SLI :)

Some day .... tell then LGA2011 is still the setup to have.

Agreed,....

My first Gigabyte motherboard was a GA-P35C-DS3R. It was one of those boards with a color scheme that looked like a clown vomited all over it.

I really don't care all that much about how a motherboard looks (color). I don't want to look at a board anyway once its been installed. I care about functionality, performance, reliability and so on,.....not color scheme,..... that just seems childish to me,....